Posts tagged as: rubyriver

Starting a new blog

Now that I have my Ruby projects planned out for at least a year, I'd like to figure out my next blog. My principal reason for writing these blogs is to learn as much as I can about new Internet technologies. Ruby will likely be my core language for exploring much of this on the server side, but I also need to learn AJAX to handle client-side programming. I had thought about starting an AJAX blog, but that is too limiting. I also want to learn about lots of other stuff:

• APIs
• Map programming and related geocoding techniques. As O'Reilly would say in his incredibly pithy manner, everything having to do with Where.
• Mashing up APIs and maps to create new hybrid apps.
• The various interop technologies, such as REST, XML-RPC, and SOAP.

This next blog will probably be the last one I start for at least a year, so I want it to be inclusive enough to handle all of these issues. I'm thinking that Mashups combine them in a convenient package, so my most likely decision will be to start Mashup.Darwinianweb.com as the new blog. That would leave me with three blogs:

• DarwinianWeb.com: Focusing on general issues of the evolution of the Internet and software.
• Ruby.DarwinianWeb.com: A central clearing house for all my Ruby programming work.
• Mashup.DarwinianWeb.com: A common location for my explorations of the rest of these new technologies.

My wife keeps telling me to just write one blog and combine everything there, but I think that the separate Ruby blog has been a success, because it allows me to cover details about the language and source code listings that would surely chase away any general reader who wasn't programming in Ruby. I think the mashup work requires the same type of separation. I'll make a decision on this in the next day or so. Luckily the code I've written for these blogs makes it easy to start a new one with just an hour or so of effort.

Ruby RSS aggregator is running

My first RSS aggregator written in Ruby is now up at RubyRiver.org. It's still primitive, but it seems to be working OK. My goal in building this is to create a tutorial for new Ruby programmers. I've been publishing the code on my Ruby blog as I've been writing it. The complete code will be available for free download in a day or two, and the tutorial will be posted on RubyRiver as it is developed.

Running multiple blogs has given me an interesting insight into one of the problems of having people read a site through RSS. I've spoken to a number of people who read this blog, and when I mention my interest in Ruby, they usually say "You should start a Ruby blog." When I say that I already write one, they ask how they can find it. That's when I realize that they read the RSS feed and have never seen the link to the Ruby site on my navbar. So how do I solve this? Should I plug everything I do in every blog post? That was why navbars got added to websites.